Last Friday, the Ontario government issued a media release outlining what it was going to do with respect to international students in the wake of the Government of Canada’s Monday announcement on study permits and work visas. I reproduce it substantially intact below because it is so objectively terrible.
To protect the integrity of postsecondary education and promote employment in critical sectors like health care and the skilled trades, the government’s measures will include the following:
Colleges and Universities
- Institute a review of programs offered by postsecondary institutions that have a sizeable amount of international students to ensure that program quality protects Ontario’s reputation as a world leader in education and meets Ontario’s labour market demands.
- Ensure that programs being offered are meeting the needs of the labour market so that students can build a life in Ontario once their education is complete.
- Introduce a moratorium on new public college-private partnerships while further work is done to strengthen oversight mechanisms and ensure the quality of existing partnerships. (Holy Mother of God: a moratorium on new PPPs???? After the feds already effectively nuked the sector? That’s your policy response reaction? God save us all – AU)
- Implement measures to improve the response rate to student outcome surveys that will help ensure the best academic outcomes are being achieved.
- Require all colleges and universities to have a guarantee that housing options are available for incoming international students.
Career Colleges
- Better integrate enforcement efforts across ministries to strengthen oversight of career colleges, including enhanced data management, documentation processes, and the efficacy of compliance investigations, ensuring timely responses to concerns and complaints.
The Ontario government will also work with sector partners and the federal government to explore ways to further crack down on bad-actor recruiters who take advantage of international students and make dubious claims of employment and citizenship.
So, effectively, that’s seven policy responses. The one about recruiters strikes me as a bit beside the point—among public sector institutions at least, this issue is ranked as a sort of third- or fourth-order consideration with respect to problems in the sector (I admit it may well be different with the privates), and the one about new PPPs is simply ridiculous. But the other five—those are decent responses.
Or at least they would have been had they been introduced months ago and used to reduce student numbers. As it stands, they are all spectacularly beside the point because none of them provide any clarity—or even any indication of a path leading to clarity with respect to how the province is going to distribute visa processing spots between institutions. And yet this is the only thing that matters to institutions now. Visa processing is in moratorium until provinces work out their system of allocation capped spots. In comparison to that, everything on the province’s list is a distraction. It’s meant to show that the province is “doing something” and hoping to God no one notices that the “something” isn’t actually relevant.
This isn’t just cluelessness. The Ministry here isn’t even clueful with respect to understanding how to even get a clue in the first place. The cluetrain? It has left the shed but there’s nobody on board (ok I will stop now).
So, all of this is bad, certainly, but it’s arguably not as bad as Colleges Ontario’s 1326-word statement responding to the federal changes, which is a masterclass in failing to read the room. Go on, read it. Utterly self-centered, all about protecting their revenue schemes, no sense whatsoever that the whole reason this scenario is occurring is that they lost social license to keep bringing in more international students and that the public has serious (albeit not necessarily well-founded) views about the quality of PPPs and the quality assurance. Tone-deaf is putting it mildly.
(Of course, Colleges Ontario is a membership organization, and when it comes to membership organizations, they necessarily go with the lowest-common denominator. My guess is that there a few colleges that probably know this statement was a bad idea, but the ultras won out.)
(Also: I am taking bets on when the rest of the sector decides to throw Conestoga under the bus for ruining the international student thing for everyone else. Issuing acceptances for 34,000 study permit students in 2023 alone—in a city with under 400,000 students—was an absurd cash-grab with no thought as to impact on the local community. As soon as the distribution of spots starts, you know the other colleges are going to argue hard against Conestoga getting a share of 2024 visas based on its 2023 share. Should be amusing).
Meanwhile, Ontario universities had not issued a joint statement as of Sunday evening (when this blog was written) but as near as I can tell, the universities’ position is going to be “colleges created this problem, any balancing of student visa numbers should be done on their backs, not ours.” Which has a certain truth to it but is a long way from the full truth (within the university sector, you can expect Algoma will attract antagonists the way Conestoga does in the college sector, albeit on a more modest scale).
In other words, everything here in Ontario is a mess. It will be an interesting to compare Ontario’s…omnishambles…what British Columbia’s plan looks like. My understanding is that it will be published Monday (tomorrow for me, yesterday for you). I apologize in advance that due to extensive work commitments this week, I won’t be able to cover the BC announcement until next week. ‘til then: keep your eyes peeled. These files are moving fast.
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Conestoga issued 34,000 permits in 2023??? So, at that rate, they would expect about 64,000 international students next year (accounting for attrition)??? This is to go along with how many domestic students – about 10,000?
This exposes a few things: 1. Reckless disregard for the quality of experience or wellbeing for newcomers they knowingly are bringing into a community where there is obviously not enough housing or employment to absorb them 2. Reckless disregard for the communities they are serving and 3. Reckless diresgard for the Ontario post secondary sector that they played the leading role in destroying. How has the Conestoga Board not been fired yet, let alone the senior administration who planned and carried this out?
I’m struggling to think of another example of a public body knowlingly behaving so irresponsibly and against the interests of students, communities, and the system. It is shocking that they did this. It is shocking that the federal and provincial governments let it happen. It is shocking that the other 23 colleges are not outraged.
37,155 (including extensions) but hey, who’s really counting.
How did it happen? None of the volume would have been possible without the rise of aggregator recruitment platforms.
Mathematically speaking – driving incoming students from 12 K in 2021 to 3o K + in 2023 would simply not have been possible without online recruitment platforms (aggregators) driven by networks of 10,000 subagents.
Dumping MASS VOLUMES of students, with substantial evidence of near indiscriminate recruitment (like “Black Friday” sales events, “on the spot admissions” marketing campaigns) has had a dramatic impact on Canada, its post secondary institutions and students themselves. And while eliminating (essentially outsourcing) the responsibility to supervise education agent conduct on the ground is convenient for Canadian institutions, the impact on international students being recruited has been absolutely devastating.
The Federal cap on international student intake IS the legacy of aggregator recruitment platforms in the Canadian edu-export market context.
Looking into the underlying ties between these entities and colleges themselves is something I am suggesting needs to be done urgently. And yes – I would suggest starting with Conestoga itself.
Conestoga issued over 60k offers to international students and had a 51% study permit approval rate in Jan.1 2022- Apr. 20 2023, hence around 30k of its offer holders actually received visa approval (source: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/canadian-schools-are-accepting-international-students-by-the-thousands-but-nearly-half-arent-being-allowed/article_9ae0d870-9db7-11ee-9dec-b71629c12c53.html).
As of 2021-2022, Conestoga has 13k international students (source: https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https%3A%2F%2Fdata.ontario.ca%2Fdataset%2Fe9634682-b9dc-46a6-99b4-e17c86e00190%2Fresource%2F07fdeefd-fe44-4df8-bd7d-5419a79f90ec%2Fdownload%2Fhc_open_data_-_2021-22_final.xlsx&wdOrigin=BROWSELINK)
I really cant wrap my head around the fact that, with the overlapping narratives and practices of international students closely related to economy and immigration, IRCC issues study permits without checking the institutional capacity for so many years and then try to save the day right now.
As for ties. A piece of fact:
“ApplyBoard is thrilled to announce that we have raised C$375M (US$300M) in Series D funding at a post-money valuation of C$4B (US$3.2B)! The round was led by Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board, through its Teachers’ Innovation Platform (TIP). “
37,155 (including extensions) but hey, who’s really counting. How did it happen? Mathematically speaking – driving incoming students from 12 K in 2021 to 30 K + in 2023 would simply not have been possible without online recruitment platforms (aggregators) driven by networks of 10,000 subagents.
Dumping MASS VOLUMES of students, with substantial evidence of near indiscriminate recruitment (like “Black Friday” sales events, “on the spot admissions” marketing campaigns) has had a dramatic impact on Canada, its post secondary institutions and students themselves. And while eliminating (essentially outsourcing) the responsibility to supervise education agent conduct on the ground is convenient for Canadian institutions, the impact on international students being recruited has been absolutely devastating.
The Federal cap on international student intake IS the legacy of aggregator recruitment platforms in the Canadian edu-export market context. Looking into the underlying ties between these entities and colleges themselves is something I am suggesting needs to be done urgently. And yes – I would suggest starting with Conestoga itself.
Thank you for keeping us up to date about this fast evolving disaster. I assume that the cap is already raised “as we speak” (or rather, write) about this. Minister Miller will have to make so many concessions for francophone students and for public institutions outside of the hardest hit areas (institutions for which this has been a lifeline for years in some cases), that the cap will (likely unofficially) be raised by a few 10,000 student visas. And in the hardest hit areas, enforcement may very well depend on how many jobs are on the line.
It would have been best if the situation would have been addressed in a concerted joint effort between federal and provincial governments. I’m not laying blame here, because we may never know whether there has been an attempt for federal-provincial cooperation on this topic before Minister Miller’s announcement, and if yes, why it failed.
In the best of possible worlds, federal and provincial governments would still get together and try to fix this in a way that minimizes damage and pain. What are the chances?
Making mistakes is not necessarily a problem. Ignoring mistakes is a problem. That goes for more than one party here.
The problem was for years in the making, and nobody with responsibility is in a position of finger-pointing.
Lack of college oversight, lack of operating funds for public institutions, lack of caution in setting and adjusting visa numbers, all contributed to create this problem.
Stop looking backwards at how the situation developed. Water under the proverbial bridge.
Stop looking at this entire operation as a cash cow to keep budgets on track.
Determine NOW the 2024 and 2025 enrollment statistics. How many students can our community handle, really? How many can be housed ON CAMPUS? Is there adequate free market housing for the overflow? Have new students been adequately and truthfully advised of the costs of living in Ontario for the duration of their academic time?
At my institution it is not program quality that is lacking and requiring review but attention, and commitment to infusing career preparedness. I can only imagine this extends province wide. There has never been more of a need for trained Career Development Practitioners/Professionals to be recognized and handed the reigns to guide and instruct students regarding career planning and employability skills. Actual CDP’s, not teachers, not HR staff, individuals who have the education and experience to prepare students for success in today’s labour market. Students (including domestic) manage to complete the academics but have no idea how to get and keep a job or develop a career plan. It’s time to provide a budget and some respect to this profession so that we can support our students to flourish, build satisfaction in their careers and prosper in our communities.